NGOs, Voluntourism, Cambodia, and Life Lessons

Posts categorized under Mistakes

This was as lucky week! This past weekend, I was grateful for the opportunity to speak at TEDxOxbridge – the second annual TEDx event being split between the two universities. My talk on voluntourism focused on the need to promote and support our youth in selecting educational travel opportunities over volunteering as my experience has […]

I wrote a piece for the PEPY Newsletter this month about a failure we had at one of our programs at PEPY and I thought I would share it here as well. I just realized that we should also post it on the Admitting Failures website – a site I have tweeted about before and […]

When I first saw “Changing the World on Vacation“, I had to cover my eyes for half of the film. Did I REALLY say that, do that, THINK that? Ugh…. Watching the first year of our work at PEPY is like watching someone act out the exact opposite of what I now believe in terms […]

When I first read Greg Mortenson’s book, Three Cups of Tea, I loved it. It was 2007 or 2008, I had just spent a few years beginning our work at PEPY, an organization which had started with our own school construction story in 2005. The story resonated with me. I loved that he was talking […]

I recently put up a post about a speech Ivan Illich gave to a group of young American volunteers about to head to Mexico to “help”. It’s one of those speeches that makes you re-question all of your good intentions and perhaps reflect on your past actions with a new light. And then it can […]

Join the discussion on Social Edge about voluntourism and how to “do it right”. I argue, that “doing it right” means not coming into a place to “volunteer” in the first place, but to learn and to share mutually. “Learning service” rather than “service learning” is what we should teach our students to seek out […]

I recently wrote a piece about PEPY Tours on World Nomad’s website. I am reposting it below as it relates to a lot of the themes of this blog: Responsible Giving, voluntourism, Cambodia, etc Fast Five Profile: PEPY Tours One of the PEPY riders on her bike for Cambodian based PEPY Tours 1. Who are […]